


Step Right Up (you can't miss this show)

by AngeNoir



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Circus, F/M, Female Tony, Intrigue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-08 21:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11090109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngeNoir/pseuds/AngeNoir
Summary: You know, Toni did find it strange that Obie would be so insistent that she be sent on this really, freaking crazy mission as a cover for the SHIELD operatives. But if she was going to do this, she was going to do this in the best damn possible way ever, and turn it into a show to end all shows.





	Step Right Up (you can't miss this show)

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Toni—”

“Don’t you do that, Obie, don’t you fucking do that.” She barreled around the corner, legs pumping, high heels snapping loudly against the floor. “Don’t you _dare_ —”

“ _Toni_ ,” Obie said, following behind her at a more sedate pace. He simply sighed as she slammed the workshop door between them, and leaned against the glass. “You can’t hide from this forever,” he continued, voice muffled and hidden by the thick glass.

“I can damned well try!” she snarled over her shoulder, her thick braid whipping against her back.

She heard the door creak and tensed as the workshop opened and Obie came in, resting a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Toni. Work with me here.”

“I’ll work with you when I hear something I fucking _like_. A tour of fucking Europe is nowhere near what we were supposed to be doing this year!” she shot back, feeling her skin crawl as his hand dropped a little to splay over her back.

“Toni, you’re not looking at this from the right perspective! It’s an opportunity, a way of getting yourself out in the world!”

Toni slammed the screwdriver down on the table and turned around, jabbing a finger into Obie’s chest (more like underneath his pecs, considering how short she was, but the point was the same). “You want me to go off on some crazed _fake_ circus because you think that’s what I need to do to introduce myself to the world? Have you lost your _mind_?!”

“Toni, they need you to travel with the Soldier, to keep his arm up and running. This is a longer mission than he’s ever been on. You’ve helped with him before—” Obie began, but Toni was already shaking her head violently enough to make her hair hit against her back.

“No. _No_ , Obie, I’ll make weapons and tech for them, I’ll design their AIs and their systems, but I am not, and do not _ever want to be_ , an operative of any kind!” She stepped forward, throwing her shoulders forward to make Obie lean back a bit. “I stay out of company business, I work with SHIELD as much as you want me to, but I don’t want to be on display for people to wonder about my seriousness. I worked too hard to get my degrees and my patents, and my fucking tech well-known, to throw it off by – by joining a _circus_!”

Obie put both his hands on her shoulders, shaking her just a little. “I need you to think about it this way, Toni – you’ve been sequestered away for so long. You’ve been so focused on doing your parents’ legacy proud, on building up the company, of helping SHIELD find your parents’ murderer, of bouncing from base to base or school to school, I want you to have some time to have some _fun_. You haven’t had any friends, cooped up with SHIELD, and you haven’t had any time to develop into a blossoming young lady the way you should have.”

Toni took a step back, forcing Obie to let go of her shoulders. “And putting me in a fucking _circus_ is what’s going to make me a proper lady.”

“Putting you in a circus will get you out from this, yes, solitude that was necessary as a young child, unable to protect yourself – and your godmother agreed, don’t forget that. This will put you in the forefront of the spotlight, so to speak, and it will let you meet other people! Besides, I know you.” He smiled, and she hated that he was right. “You already think it would be fun to do. You just don’t want to leave your projects until they’re fully implemented.”

“Hell, Obie, they want to create a smart navigating and targeting system. It’s almost impossible to do that, and one wrong move could have the targeting system aiming at the people it’s supposed to be protecting. I can’t just leave. And this seems _really_ unnecessary. I just got the board to take some of my non-military designs seriously.”

“There’s no one else they can send with the Soldier, and they want you to analyze the weaponry of the suppliers throughout.”

Toni whirled on her heel and stormed deeper into the workshop, forcing Obie to follow behind her. “So, this is who you and Aunt Peggy put your trust in, who you’ve been having investigate my parents’ assassination. This is the group you think can do this. An organization that thinks by disguising operatives as _circus performers_ , they’ll be able to – what, find out who’s been supplying weapons to terrorists? Just because weapons are found in a storehouse somewhere doesn’t fucking mean anything, Obie, _you_ know that. How many SI weapons have ended up in the wrong hands?! We managed to lose an entire fucking _shipment_ two months ago—”

“As a favor to me, _please_ ,” Obie said, voice gaining that little bit of an edge that reminded Toni that he was in fact her guardian, he technically owned the whole company until she turned 21, which was still a bit more than a year away. “All I’m asking is that you make a splash in Europe. Drag the headlines and the paparazzi away while I figure out what’s going on inside SI. If SHIELD wants you to assist and analyze the Soldier, well, I always thought you liked it, anyway? And you’ll get to pick what operatives will be nearby you.”

Never let it be said that Toni was slow; she turned back to Obie, eyes narrowed. “You want this to look like my acting out, is that it? That I wasted SI money on buying this circus, parading it around Europe, so that the news stops hounding you on SI’s security. We have a lot of military contracts. Bet the military might not renew that many contracts with us if we can’t show we found whatever leak it was and plug it up.”

For a moment, Obie’s eyes flashed with something akin to anger and disgust, but it was gone too fast for Toni to grab onto. Instead, he beamed largely at her, _again_ dropping one of his hands on her shoulder heavily. “Couldn’t slip anything past you, could I? It’d be more easily believed that you’d do something… flighty like that. Your presence will legitimize the circus, and it won’t be scrutinized so closely. And SHIELD isn’t really trying to figure out _where_ the weapons are coming from – as you pointed out, weapons in a storehouse don’t mean a thing. They’re trying to figure out _how_ people are breaking into those storehouses.”

Arching one perfectly manicured eyebrow, Toni drawled, “So basically, SHIELD wants to see if I can get into these warehouses? There’s not many that could keep me out. I might be a bad test.”

“They want you to assess the weaknesses in electronic security, while the Soldier and the other operatives will assess the weaknesses in physical security. You won’t even have to type up the report – that will be left to the operatives,” Obie coaxed. “You just need to give them that in. That’s all. If you _really_ don’t like the idea, all you need to do is charm the customs agents. You could rent a hotel suite, laze about. You overwork yourself anyway. You’re ahead on a lot of your projects, SI’s got a good headway, stock’s up so it can take a small hit—”

Toni tuned out Obie’s words, the different reasons he was laying out, instead staring down at her scarred hands, her bitten and dulled fingernails, the machine parts that were scattered around. On the corner of her desk was a stack of patents she snuck past Obie, patents for clean energy, for defense systems, for phones, for medical equipment, all under a pseudonym so that no one could deny them to her, wonder what she was doing. She kept under the radar, tried to play the frivolous and foolish debutante, keeping her knowledge and intellect hidden until her parents’ killer had been found.

She was tired of being in the shadows, of being nothing but frippery and fashion, of barely being seen and when she was, getting her head patted and sent away from the ‘big boy’s table.’

“Alright, _fine_ , Obie, whatever, this is the absolute last thing, you understand?” she said, cutting into Obie’s monologue. “I’ll get the details from Pierce, I guess, or Rumlow. I’ll figure it out. The absolute _last_ thing for them. I’m done hiding in the shadows.”

“That’s my girl!” Obie said in that overly patronizing way, ruffling her hair as if she was twelve still. “Sitwell tells me that you’ve been doing a lot of work on the Winter Soldier anyway, and all you’ll really need to do is do upkeep on his arm—”

“ _No_ ,” she said viciously, moving towards the door to force him to walk with her. “No, if you want me in a fucking circus, I’m not going to stick to the sidelines. You want a splash to take the attention off of you, and to keep the true purpose of these operatives in Europe? You’ll fucking get that.”

Obie paused, a frown creasing his forehead. “Of course, we want you involved, but we also don’t want you in any danger—”

“We’re going to be sneaking into warehouses by night, performing by day. There’s no problem at all, unless there’s something I don’t know about?”

At Toni’s piercing gaze, Obie grinned, wide and rueful. “Of course not. I just didn’t want to overload you. But if you think you can handle it, of course, Toni, it would be helpful.”

Toni opened the door and then looked at Obie expectantly. With a small sigh, Obie shook his head and exited the room. “You need to get used to people around you and in your space, Toni my girl. You need to not be so touchy about it.”

“When I’m finally at the head of the company,” Toni said stiffly, “I suppose I’ll learn quickly then.”

Obie regarded her heavily, and then let out a soft sigh. “What’m I gonna do with you, princess?” he said, but since it was rhetorically phrased – and because it had a term of endearment she hated and had _told_ Obie she hated – she simply closed the door and moved back to the workbench.

There, she braced her hands on the table and swallowed hard. She had – _they_ had – had plans to introduce her to the company, let her go through the R &D department this year and get a feel for the main projects that were in the works or still just concepts. She would go on a few shows, tell what she’d been doing all this time, her ideas for the company, the whole nine yards.

Now, she knew with this ‘flighty’ endeavor, she’d have to rebuild her reputation as someone serious.

Or…

 _Or_ , she could manipulate this, move this into something advantageous. Not just a part of the circus, but the _head_ of the circus. She’d be the one in charge of hiring everyone else, make it a huge success, showcase some of her ‘fun’ technology. She had a mechanical creature she could refashion to be some cute animal, like a small dog or panther. Hell, maybe even a unicorn or a dragon – something to catch the whimsy of the crowd.

She’d need a stellar program, and if she was the one in charge that meant she’d be the ringmaster. She’d take the heat off of SI since, apparently, they sucked at keeping up security, but she’d do it by proving she could organize and present a fully-realized circus program. She could even bring it to the States, use it as a way to promote and showcase the technology of SI.

Right. She’d have to go through a lot of material, figure out what was necessary, get the parts she needed.

She’d probably not sleep tonight – but honestly, when did she ever?

***

She was not quite sure why Sitwell was frowning so hard at the packet she had put in front of him. Moving absently around the room, she poked at the drawers and fiddled with the pens. Finally, she completed her circuit and perched on the arm of the chair on the other side of Sitwell’s desk. “I don’t see what the problem is,” she said, overtly sweetly in that little-girl-voice she knew Sitwell detested.

Sitwell looked up at her, eyes narrowed slightly. “This is very thorough,” he said in the very bland way of his.

“Of course. I’m not putting the Stark name behind something that is anything less than perfection – even if it is a farce meant to take the heat off of SI and to distract people from all the lovely SHIELD agents that will be milling about in Europe under false pretenses.” Her smile went saccharine sweet, her voice even younger. “Will I even get to know how many agents are on the mission, let alone who they’ll be and what person they’ll be playing?”

Sitwell got that pinched, pained look, that made her think he wanted to rub his temples but didn’t want to show any weakness in front of her. “That’s strictly need to know. You were just supposed to be promoting it, making a few public appearances at the circus perhaps, making people look _away_ from the circus and at you, not… taking center stage.”

“Let me get this straight – you want me to take center stage, but _not_ take center stage? Distract but at the same time, not be present?” she asked skeptically, one eyebrow raised pointedly.

Sitwell, little unflappable Sitwell, simply returned her gaze solidly. “Exactly.”

“Well,” Toni said, baring her teeth in a farce of a smile, “that’s not what you’re getting from me. I’m not putting my name behind something useless or badly organized. And you know me, Sitwell. I’m not about to let go of control, especially on something that can backfire as badly as this could. What would it kill you to let me organize the act and take a part in this? Send me the agents you want to fulfill some of those positions, earmark them or whatever, and I’ll handle hiring the rest of the staff.”

Because Toni wasn’t going to just let this sink or skate by. She was going to take this bull by the horns and wrestle it into something someone would be proud to put together. The more she could do to minimize the negative backlash of this on her name, the better.

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to let that happen. I know that they had certain plans for the attractions that would mesh with our agents’ skills—”

“How about this, Sitwell?” Toni cut in, parking her ass on his desk and crossing her legs almost primly, practically the picture of femininity if she hadn’t been leaning forward aggressively. “How about you read through the whole file, then take this along to whoever had these plans, and tell me where they don’t mesh. Because I’m not putting my name behind anything I don’t feel confident in. My confidence is in this plan. You’re going to have to work hard to convince me whatever the hell you guys have is just as confidence-inspiring.”

It was only because she knew Sitwell so intimately, and for so long, that she could tell when he was grinding his teeth in his head. “Miss Stark,” he began.

“Go on, I’m waiting,” she continued, ever-so-sweetly. “What plan do you have?”

Sitwell put his hands to the edge of his glasses, the sure sign of his that meant he had an answer, but it wasn’t one he wanted to say.

“Put that in front of your tactician, your supervisor, whoever the hell you want. But be absolutely clear I am not stepping a foot into Europe until I know for sure the plan is airtight and will run like a dream.” Hopping off the desk, she fluttered her fingers at Sitwell. “Bye-bye, Badun.”

Striding out of his office, she sashayed past the mousy red-headed secretary and the two agents waiting. She recognized one of them – Rumlow, a brute of a man, whom she did not like and who did not like her in turn – but the other was unknown. She tilted her head saucily at them, flipping her hair over her shoulder, and turned the corner of the hallway.

And hit into a solid body of muscle.

“What the _fuck_?” Toni yelped, pinwheeling backwards until a hand grabbed her wrist and steadied her.

“Toni?”

Toni lit up like a lightbulb. “Clint _Barton_!”

The short blond grinned at her, punching her shoulder lightly. “I didn’t know you’d be in today! Haven’t seen you in a while, actually.”

“I thought you were on assignment. Somewhere in New Mexico, right?” Toni said, hooking her arm around his and dragging him alongside her.

Clint laughed, digging his heels in. “No, Toni, I gotta talk to Sitwell, report in.”

“Oh, if you’re going on this farce of a mission, I feel marginally better,” Toni murmured.

Clint stopped, jerking Toni to a stop as well. He looked at her, confused and even a little leery. “You know about this mission?”

“Of course. They want me to put the Stark name on it, pull attention away from the fact that you guys will be investigating weapons companies in Europe.”

She watched as he tilted his head, still bewildered. Clint Barton was one of the few agents she not only knew well, but enjoyed being around. She had lived much of her childhood life in SHIELD safehouses and even in different SHIELD offices. While she was there, SHIELD had taken advantage of the fact that she was brilliant and had passed her many different projects. Being a child, she had tolerated it to a certain extent, until she was fifteen and being asked to design a paleolithic weapon. At that point, she had been sure the SHIELD officers were fucking with her, and she’d stormed into Sitwell’s office to chew him off about the ridiculous request that made less sense than anything else she’d been asked to make up to that point, where he’d assured her that he had absolutely meant what he said – there was an asset who needed those items.

She’d immediately insisted on meeting the agent who had requested such ridiculous items. She wasn’t going to create such frivolous items until she knew it was for a good reason. Or, at least, unless she knew it was for someone who was less of a dick than Rumlow was. Sitwell had shown her to Clint Barton with relish, and it took her the short work of five minutes to establish that Clint had been pissed at his handler, which was why he’d put in such a request in the first place, that Clint actually _did_ use a bow and could make use of the arrows, and that Clint and her were asshole soulmates. Ever since then, she’d made more and more elaborate trick arrows for Clint, and Clint would bring back trinkets from odd parts of the world.

Now, seeing his befuddled look made something ping on the back of her radar. She put her hands on her hips, cocking her head at him. “You _are_ here for the ‘across-Europe-jaunt-with-a-circus-cover’ mission, aren’t you?”

“I think I am,” he replied slowly. “I hadn’t known _you_ were going to be there. They said they wanted this discreet.”

“Well, they told _me_ that they wanted my big name to distract from the fact that half the staff will be SHIELD, so they’re lying to someone. Probably me. But that doesn’t explain why they want me on this. Why Obie pulled strings to convince me to come…” she trailed off, trying to put the pieces she had together. Unfortunately, two and two kept coming up as five, and she couldn’t figure out what was throwing off her calculations. She’d need more data… which would be easy enough, considering she’d been snooping in SHIELD systems since she was knee-high to her godmother.

(Granted, her snooping at that age had been more ‘how-long-can-I-wander-around-this-SHIELD-facility-without-being-noticed’ than actual hacking, but the hacking started soon enough after that.)

Clint looked past her, to where Sitwell’s office was, and then back at her. “Well, I’ll tell you what I can, but I don’t think you should be on this mission. Especially if you were trying to – what was it, distract? On missions like these, you don’t want to draw _any_ attention. It is really important not to create a target. Especially with the nature of our mission.”

More bells pinged at the back of her mind, but she hadn’t gotten as far as she had without knowing how to fly beneath the radar. Certainly Obie would never have let her get as close to the CEO position as she was if he had thought she was a legitimate threat. He had gotten comfortable in the offices of Stark Industries, so when she started indicating interest as early as seventeen – right after she finished her doctorate in mechanical engineering and decided to go for an MBA with MIT as well – he had started to take a larger interest in her life. Until then, she was the last remaining Stark, the heiress who rattled away in an all-girl’s boarding school, shooting through the grades and earning friends and enemies alike with her abrasive personality. She showed up at a few different galas and events over the years, particularly the annual Stark Industries Christmas Party. There, she had been relegated to the empty-headed socialite, following in her mother’s footsteps, and Obie had apparently really bought into that.

So she was well acquainted with keeping herself low-key and as invisible as she could be. Now would be no different.

***

She spent a lot of time focusing on creating the program. Her research took her down a lot of different corridors, and it wasn’t until JARVIS’s flashing lights that she looked up to see Sitwell sitting on her couch, watching her with something … unnamed. It was hard to place, considering her eyesight was blurry from research and no sleep for, god, what was it, two days? It didn’t look positive, at least, but she didn’t really care.

“Got some good news for me, Sitwell? Your higher-ups finally see the light?”

“What are you researching there, Miss Stark?” he asked.

She laughed, shaking her head as she stood up and stretched, cracking her neck. “No, no, you don’t get to ask me that question because, see, if you’re here because you’re letting me ringmaster of my own show, I can build whatever, and you don’t get any input. If you’re here because you’re _not_ letting me be ringmaster, I’m not going, so the point is moot.”

Sitwell stared at her over the top of his blankets, drumming fingers against his thigh. She tried to ignore her growling stomach and the exhaustion that tugged on her body, and folded her arms, meeting his gaze squarely.

After another few moments, Sitwell sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, ending the stare-off with her. “Yes, the director has agreed to allow you to take the role you have so precisely laid out in your proposal. _But_ you must provide tech and support to our agents if they have any need of it, are we clear?”

She waved a hand dismissively, stumbling a little as she turned away and moved to the door to her quarters. “Yeah, yeah. I already assumed I was doing that, anyway. Does that mean I’ll get a list of who’s SHIELD and who’s not, so I know who I can talk in front of and who I can’t?”

“Not a chance, Miss Stark.”

“Well, it was worth a shot,” she mumbled, leaning against the door that would take her back to her private quarters. “Are we done? I’m tired, and there’s a lot more to throw together before we travel. I’ll need that travel schedule, by the way. We’ll need to advertise, we’ll need to sell the ideal, I’ll need to be standing in a lot of parties to sell this event, and there needs to be some level of cooperation between your agents and me. We can’t be at cross-purposes without tripping over one another, so take _that_ into consideration as you keep your secrets.”

Sitwell tilted his head. “We’ll see, Miss Stark.”

She rolled her eyes and opened the door, stepping into the small, almost closet-like, room that held her bed and her bag. She had a bunch of small rooms like this scattered around the U.S., and even a few abroad, come to think of it – growing up with her godmother, Peggy Carter, meant she traveled from one SHIELD base to another. It also meant she was raised by various agents, and it was always a problem to try and integrate a child into the facility. Her rooms were almost always spare storage rooms that had been hastily cleaned out and fitted with a cot and her textbooks for over the summers, and stayed at various boarding schools throughout the school year.

Over the years, she had personalized the different small rooms, she’d added her own touches, and she’d built around them labs or workspaces she could tinker in. It helped like here, in Washington D.C., the closet she’d been stuck in and repurposed as her bedroom, had been at the back of a workshop in the first place. She always enjoyed staying in the D.C. area, too, because it was close enough to MIT to go back and visit the (few) friends she’d made, when possible. It was also close to the base Rhodey was stationed at, so it was easy to pop on down and bug him enough to let her tinker or pitch ideas on the research and development of their aviation equipment.

Flopping down on the bed, she stared up at the ceiling, where she’d tacked up a poster of Captain America. This idea of a circus… she couldn’t believe Obie was relying on _this_ to distract from the disasters that were happening at SI. She still had about nine months before she could take the helm of the company, and she needed to play nice or Obie would create a lot more friction than was necessary. She wanted him on board with her, so she’d do this – she’d work on the Winter’s arm, she’d give SHIELD the excuse of the circus to tour Europe, and she’d splash the Stark name all over it, distracting from the problems that were going on in the States. She’d play this game, and play it fucking _well_ , and when she took her place at the head of SI no one could say that she hadn’t done her best by the company – and that she hadn’t put together a stunning presentation that rocked Europe, regardless of its true motivations and meanings.

***

It had taken her less than a week to design and work through a routine. They’d need to practice, and she would expect nothing but the best. If it came down to it, she would relegate them to clean-up or set-up, and not actually put them in the show. It would make it easier for them to operate more incognito, for sure, but the agents were highly trained and more likely to do the type of program she was envisioning.

Still, she created a small list of possible performers – she had no problem with poaching other acts, especially since it was off-season for a lot of circuses, and she could afford to offer generous paychecks – to help pad out their performance. The animatronic animals would be simplistic, nowhere near the level of sophistication she would prefer, but the public wouldn’t care. The puppets were easy enough to build, and simple enough that even the most moronic of SHIELD agents could operate them. The pyrotechnics would be a bit tricky to fit in the tent, but she would figure it out.

“Are we ready, Miss Stark?”

She looked up from her inventory list at the agent – Rollins, she thought, though she might be wrong. “Everyone here?”

“Yes, Miss Stark. Everyone’s boarded the plane, and your tech has been stored away.”

“So let me get this straight – we’re going to land in England, first, and somehow you want to be off from England within a day?”

The agent hesitated. “Ah, Agent Rumlow is the one in charge? You can discuss it with him.”

“Oh, I will,” Toni muttered. She’d bumped heads with Rumlow before, and he was way too boorish for her tastes. He always seemed to have the ability to say the most sexist and patronizing thing possible, even if he didn’t seem to actively mean it most of the time. In any case, she’d gone toe to toe with him multiple times, particularly since he was one of the more senior agents and so traveled more frequently with her aunt than she would have liked.

It didn’t take her long to track Rumlow down, either – he was either giving a pep talk or a death sentence to his agents, who knew which – and she leaned against the door until one of the baby agent’s darting eyes prompted Rumlow to glance behind him and notice her.

“Miss Stark,” he said, managing to make the term dismissive and infantilizing. “What brings you here?”

“I’m sure you’re _one hundred percent_ aware that I’m the one calling the shots once we get to Europe. If this is supposed to be a good distraction, we need to sell the product, and that’s not something that can be done in one day. We get into London, we set up, we advertise a bit more – I’ve already been advertising, but a little more couldn’t hurt – we do a weekend’s worth of shows, and then we move on to France. I don’t want to hear you complaining, either. Your superiors need _my_ name in order to sell this charade, because this is exactly something a rich young idiot would do, and if you want me to cooperate and make things run smoothly, you’ll work with me,” she said calmly, her heels clicking as she strode into the room and smiled charmingly at all the people in the room – there were about seven of them, all low-level agents, all regular grunts. “That means you’ll be helping either in the main program or the set-up. I hired some pretty good acts, but that doesn’t change the fact that I need all hands on deck for this to succeed.”

Rumlow looked as if he was going to pop an artery. “You have some nerve, coming here in front of _my_ team and dictating to _me_ what’s going to happen.”

She put a hand over her mouth, opened her eyes wide and innocent, made her voice soft and breathy. “Why, I do declare, Agent Rumlow, that almost sounds as if you _won’t_ listen to your superiors and let me lead this show. Didn’t you hear? I’m the ringmaster for all of this.”

“You are a convenient excuse and don’t you forget it,” Rumlow snarled through his teeth.

She tapped her fingers against her mouth, letting her brow wrinkle in confusion. “Remind me – who is here to do maintenance on Winter’s arm? Who here is supplying the tech that you’ll need to infiltrate these headquarters or whatever, and gather data on any illegal dealings? Who here could either keep your presence muffled and quiet, or trumpet your names and faces to the world? _Who here_ can ruin all of that in a blink of an eye to a reporter that she is _required_ to talk to in order to keep up this charade?”

“Are you threatening the success of this mission? Would you really be that petty?” Rumlow sneered.

She dropped her hand, face blank and matter-of-fact. “Hell yes, I am threatening the mission and _fuck_ yes, I’d be that petty. You _know_ me, Rumlow. Don’t test me on this. I’m already _highly displeased_ I’m here under these conditions in the first place.”

Rumlow stared her down – or tried to. She’d had enough staring contests with her aunt, with the assistant director Fury, and with the director Pierce to not be the least frightened or fazed by his scowl.

One of the SHIELD support staff – a tech, she thought, someone who was supposed to go with them to infiltrate the different weapons manufacturers they would be investigating – came in through the door with a clipboard and paused. “Ah… Agent Rumlow?”

For a moment, he did nothing but continue to stare at her. Then, with a hissed out breath and a deep growl, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the door, the tech following on his heels.

She turned to all the other agents, letting her eyes sweep over them, quickly trying to remember faces if not names so she had an idea of who was in fact SHIELD and who would be the people she actually hired to make this circus a success. “So, now that that unpleasantness has been taken care of, let me clue you in on how this is going to work…”

It didn’t take her long to establish dominance in the room – amazing what a pair of killer heels, sharp outfit, and a no-nonsense attitude could do for young baby agents that already had a healthy respect for chain of command and authority drilled into them. She had already established they were, for the most part, gophers and people would set things up, build the sets, work the lighting, all that jazz. She had wished there had been more who could reliably do acrobatic feats and the like, but when it came down to it, she was going to use this circus to promote the robotics and prosthetic lines of Stark Industries. The main program would be her robotic creatures, doing tricks, mixed in with a few outside acts doing short bits.

Clint walked down the aisle from the front of the jet, leaning a little on the overhead ceiling as the plane swayed. “Toni?”

She turned around and then squinted at him. “You use a bow and arrow, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” he said, grinning a little. “Why?”

“I think I can whip up a few trick arrows, get some really nice ones to show off. You can be one of my starring attractions! The amazing… can’t use your callsign. Or your name. Hmm. Maybe—”

“Can I speak with you briefly, though? About what’s going to happen when we land?”

She lifted an eyebrow at him, suspicious of what his true intentions were… but at the same time, the baby agents had their assignments, knew what they were doing once they touched ground. She didn’t really need to be around any more, and could focus on contacting her PA, make sure the gala was set up the way she wanted it. She’d need her wardrobe, she’d need to oversee the initial checks of the animatronics, the pyrotechnics, the—

“Toni?”

She shook her head, flipping her bangs away from her eyes. “Sure, yeah, why not. You know what I want from you, baby agents,” she said, looking over her shoulder and fluttering her eyelashes. “Don’t let me down, or I’ll pin your ears to your asses.”

With that, she strode out of their section of the plane, moving forwards to the front of the plane where the special agents (consultants? what were they called?) sat for the flight. She saw Rumlow scowling in the corner, but she didn’t blink at him – Rumlow was a notorious sore loser. Turning to Clint, she folded her arms and smiled, baring her teeth. “You have something to say?”

“As much as I’m on board with you handling the distraction part of this, our agents do need to be able to complete their mission. Co-opting them—”

“Shush, shhshhshh,” she said immediately, putting her finger on his mouth and stepping into his space, making him take a step back. “First of all, those – what, _seven_? – seven little agents are not going to jeopardize your mission. Do you know how long I’ve been living in and around SHIELD bases? I have a _preeetty_ good idea of what your team looks like. These rookies are grunt workers – they’re probably not even going to be physically _present_ when you do whatever type of recon work you’re doing. They’re here to run messages, crunch data, provide backup if, I dunno, you get spotted? Though how the hell you would get spotted while doing recon is beyond me, but I know SHIELD loves its redundancies. You have three specialists, _plus_ Winter, so those will be your team to recon and actually remove the data and analyze whether that weapons manufacturer is leaking weapons or, I dunno, selling secrets to, to Russia or something. Who are we at war with? The Middle East, there, we fuck with them all the time, don’t we?”

Clint opened his mouth and then shut it, glancing at Rumlow for a moment before sighing. “Okay, so maybe you can use the greenies, but that doesn’t change the fact that you directly undermined Rumlow in front of _his_ agents.”

“Aww, did I huwt his feewings?” she pouted, letting her voice turn sugary, tilting her head childishly. “Tell him to grow the fuck up. He doesn’t get to dictate terms. He doesn’t get to do anything except stick to _my_ plan. It is my reputation, my company, my _fucking skills_ on the line here. If things don’t pull off one hundred percent the way I want them to, I will have effectively sabotaged my own chances at being taken seriously when I take over my company. I’ll have solidified a reputation as an empty socialite, throwing away money on useless frivolities.” She had started out quiet and forceful, but as she spoke her voice grew more vicious, increasing in volume bit by bit. “So _no_ , I am not going to apologize to Rumlow for pretending he’s the captain of this shitshow, and I _am_ going to ask that on certain shows you participate as acts to add freshness and a bit of newness into a show that frankly has been going out of style for _decades_ , and you will either fall in line or you’ll get sent home because _guess fucking what_? I have permission _from Director Pierce himself_ to run the day-to-day operations of this circus as I please, which means that if I need your help, you goddamned are sure to be giving it to me!”

Clint glanced at her warily, and then glanced back at Rumlow before shrugging his shoulders. “Fair enough,” he said, a little weakly. “So, about my role in the show?”

She let her shoulders relax infinitesimally, taking a step back and letting out a long sigh. “Okay, right. In any case, you can’t do the mission the same time. We’ll be in each city at least five days, if not seven, so you should find a different night for each mission. We’ll have to give you guys alibis, which means that you need to have some type of define role that people can say they saw you at. You’ll need to do it at night, even though we have night shows, so maybe time it so that you can be an act at the end of the beginning, so it looks like you’re part of the show—”

“I’m the head of this mission, and you don’t get to dictate what the hell we do on it and how I run it!” Rumlow snarled.

She put her hands up, waving her hands in front of her. “Alright, alright. I get it. I don’t get to know any details, I’m just the lowly distraction, got it. But the shows are _mine_ and if you done single thing to fuck them up, I’ll fuck _you_ and your mission up _so fucking badly_ you will never live it down.” Smiling at him, she stalked out of the section of the plane to the front, where her suite was, and threw herself into a chair.

Now if she could only ride herd on them and figure out how the hell to adequately portray this fiasco, everything would be perfect.

***

It helped that her PA had already been running the advertisements for the past month, circulating interest. A lot of that interest was mocking, expecting to see her fail, which was fair enough – she could understand that type of business. And hell, it _was_ business. At least that meant that seats were filled and they’d be there looking to tear apart her performance and the performances she presented would be fabulous. It would showcase the innovative coding and robotics she’d been making, and the stir that would ripple through the tech community from the tweets, social media posts, and videos would spark new interest in Stark Industries.

People would come to see her fail, and she’d prove them wrong. It was what she did, after all.

“Miss Stark?”

She looked up to see one of the little agents poking her head around the rickety wooden door of the manager’s office of the stadium they had rented. She hadn’t caught the name of all the agentlings, but she thought it started with something with a D or a B or something.

“Yes, what is it?”

“Your puppets have come in, but we’re not sure what to do with them?” The agent hesitated. “They’re… very intricate.”

“Yes, yes, I’ll need to get on that. I have a few acts coming in today; send them to the storage, where the puppets are, and we’ll have rehearsal in about five hours.” Toni let out a sigh and shook her head. She wasn’t happy with the drain on her personal funds – because of course Obie wouldn’t appropriate Stark Industries funds for this, even if she was technically doing this for Stark Industries. She had to use her petty cash – which, while she was the heiress, and so had access to a lot more money than most people could dream of, didn’t change the fact that renting out the stadiums, buying all the equipment, hiring the guest acts, and all the logistics of feeding, transporting, and supplying for the circus, all of that meant she was scraping the reserves of her ready cash. She’d have to start liquidating assets to continue… or at least, hope that the ticket sales would quickly replenish the lion’s share of what she spent out.

The puppets were a bit dinged up, but it was quick enough to fix them, and then fiddle with the bit of animatronics that were included with the puppets (blinking eyes, rib cages that expanded and deflated in a regular motion to mimic breathing). When the guest acts arrived, she quickly got everyone and everything lined up.

She noticed she couldn’t find Clint anywhere. As the set-up began, and she retreated to her office to change into a killer dress so she could attend the soiree at the Van Dyne’s home in Trafalgar Square. This was a way to peddle the show, as well as show herself off and draw attention to the circus instead of the people within the circus, and then lend legitimacy to what she was doing. Mainly, though, this was a way for her to rub elbows with the type of people she wanted and needed in her organization, and big to-dos were always the best place for that.

She’d be back by rehearsal time, and she hoped that her appointed second in command – an extremely capable person named Somerset, who reminded her a lot like old Jarvis sometimes – would keep things running on schedule and organize everything.

Even as she stepped out of the stadium and got into the waiting luxury limo, her mind was preoccupied by the show. They hadn’t had any chances to rehearse while in the States, and their first show was tomorrow afternoon. It wouldn’t be as big as the one in the evening, but it certainly needed to knock the socks off of the audience, so that word would spread and people would come to the evening. The day after, Saturday, there were three showings – the only day with three, thankfully.

Everything needed to be in tip-top shape, and she had to admit as she exited the limo into the stunning foyer and under the sparkling lights, she wasn’t sure it was going to be.

 

“I fucking _hate_ Justin and Ty,” she snarled to herself, slamming open her office’s doors and shoving them shut. She had half a mind to pick up a phone and call Pepper, or Rhodey – someone who she could vent to and would listen to her. There was no one here…

Well, Clint. But he had already disappeared into thin air with Rumlow and that other specialist… some lady and another man, she thought. She hadn’t gotten a great look, considering the specialists had done their best to stay away from her. Only Clint regularly talked to her. She had a sneaking suspicion Rumlow had designated Clint to be the go-to between her and the rest of the team, but she didn’t mind that so much…

She really just wanted to vent. Who knew fucking Justin _Hammer_ would follow her over from the States? And while Ty had been a great friend when she was younger, he was all… creepy and leering and sending out the _totally_ wrong vibes today at that small party.

With a sigh, Toni pinched the bridge of her nose. She had left earlier than she should have, staying barely two hours to talk up her animatronics, robotics, and the circus itself.

She hoped she’d done enough to promote the circus, because there wasn’t much she could do to change it.

“Miss Stark?”

Biting her lip, she schooled her face to be blank and calm – if there was one thing Aunt Peggy had taught her, it was that losing her cool in front of others only gave them more ammunition against you. “Yes – Nora, was it?”

“Sarah, but yes, Miss Stark – we’re running into a little bit of trouble with the acrobatics. The net isn’t hung up properly. And we would like…”

She tried not to sigh out her frustrations and instead, in her $4,000 dress, went out into the stadium to deal with the (many) logistic problems waiting for her.

***

It wasn’t perfect. Of course it wasn’t – the robotics weren’t completely in sync, and she hadn’t had the chance to put in the more refined spatial awareness programming, so quite a few fell over. A few of the acts were shaky, weren’t completely down to an art form. The few opening acts she had that were professional, however, more than made up for it. The clean-up would be ridiculous, especially with that small snafu with the pyrotechnics, but it had been an amazing finish. And she had stood in the middle, dressed in a snazzy red tuxedo coat with tails, trimmed with gold, black slacks and high-heeled boots, wielding her cane and top hat as she put on the best show of her life.

She was high on exhilaration when the door to her office opened and Clint stepped in.

“Well, _hello_ , Clint, did you _see_ that? We were on fire! Almost literally, actually – that last firework was a bit too big for this enclosed stadium, and I’ll have to adjust that—”

“I’m sorry we weren’t here to see it.”

His voice gave her pause. As much as she wanted to share her triumph – and vent about the horrible day she’d had – he had obviously had a pretty bad day himself.

She turned around to take him in. He didn’t look like he was hurt in any way, though he sure looked tired – and frustrated. “Mission didn’t go so well, I take it?”

“Oh, it… went,” he muttered, sitting heavily down on the small cot she had shoved against the side of the office. “What are we even doing here?”

When she simply stared at him, unimpressed, he huffed. “No, seriously, what is it that you think we’re doing here? Because I’m… curious.”

“Curious? You?” she asked, eyebrows lifting in pointed disbelief. “You’re the most apathetic agent I’ve ever met. You wouldn’t bestir yourself to pick up a piece of popcorn that rolled out of your mouth. I’ve seen you do it.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it, frowning a little. “Okay, well, I see your point, but honestly – why do you think we’re here?”

“So you want the reason they gave me, the reason they gave me after I pestered Obie, or the reason I’ve come to believe?” Toni sighed, giving up on the fact that she’d be allowed to continue riding on the high the presentation had given her, and sat down in her seat, staring down at all the paperwork she had deliberately been trying _not_ to think about. “So when Obie pitched this idea, he said you’d need my expertise to analyze whatever weapons or schematics you’d recover. That Winter would need me to look at his arm. When I wouldn’t take it for face value, he admitted that he wanted me to distract from the recent shipments that have been compromised at Stark Industries, and the financial hits the company is going through. But I’m starting to think he wants me to ruin my name, to make it clear I’m not fit to take over at Stark Industries.”

Come to think of it, she had thought that there was something else, something fishy, but she didn’t have all the puzzle pieces yet, couldn’t put that picture together, so she stuck with the parts she knew and could substantiate.

“Huh,” Clint muttered, dragging a hand down his face. “Okay, well… when you say Winter, you mean the big scary dude that follows Rumlow around like a puppy?”

“Yep, didn’t you know? I thought he was one of those consultants they call in. He disappears and reappears pretty often… anyway, was that all you wanted? That’s why you showed up? Aren’t you going to figure out where you fit in the schedule?” Toni asked pointedly.

With a sigh, he nodded and sat upright. “Yeah, we gotta figure this out. I think Rumlow actually is happy you insisted on sticking around for a longer time, because we definitely didn’t get what we wanted from the factory. We’re gonna try and hit the business building soon, but that place has a hell of a lot heavier security, so…” he trailed off, and rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ll probably do it after more recon though, because of the heavier security, but – yeah, I shouldn’t be rambling on about this. What do you want from me?”

She let him distract her with talks of his act that she preferred to have him do, but a few more puzzle pieces were coming into the light and she didn’t like what was coming into focus.

***

There was _so much work_ involved in setting up, running, promoting, cleaning up, and moving a circus. She barely had time to breathe, let alone think about what Rumlow was doing beneath her nose. Not that she didn’t _try_ to keep an eye on him, but she already had a big enough staff beyond him and his three harbingers of doom, she had to reorder the pyrotechnics, she had to order the supplies to be waiting for them in their second city, she had to get all of this packed up and onto the jet in a timely enough fashion, she had to make sure the _stadium_ was waiting for them, ready, she had to make sure the party she was throwing for the upper crust was catered and organized and in place – and really, Rumlow was a big boy. Aunt Peggy, for all that she was a lot more hands off than most guardians, never put Toni’s care into the hands of someone Aunt Peggy didn’t like (read, Pierce, who she called a smarmy and condescending bag of dicks in private), and Toni had definitely been put into classes with Rumlow, and in some points under Rumlow’s supervision, so Toni had to expect that Rumlow was just pissed she’d stomped over his authority. He wouldn’t really do something that she’d have to keep a close eye on… would he?

Right, well, another thing she’d have to delegate attention to, somehow.

Toulouse wasn’t the big name city she, or anyone, thought of when thinking of France, but it was a big enough city that there was enough of a cream to hold her party. _Again_ , Ty showed up, and he really didn’t act any better than he had in London. She spent half of her energy at the party trying to stay the hell away from him, and not enough time focusing on talking to the people she needed to – heads of the factories, the distributors, the old names in shipping and supplies and distribution. She came back to the show frustrated, only to find out that _again_ the consultants had fucked off to who knew where, and she one of her hired acts couldn’t make it, and she was ready to pull her hair out.

“If I can bless god for one thing, it’s you, Somerset,” she growled under her breath at her second in command as they tried to sort out what the hell had happened to the food she had ordered for the staff at the circus. Every piece of paper she could find listed the food had been ordered and delivered, but they couldn’t figure out where the hell it was.

The show, however, went off without a hitch. Toni had drilled all of them in London, over and over again, perfecting the acrobatics, the juggling, the switching in and out, the smooth transition of acts, from the first to the next, on and on, she’d trained a lot more people on how to use the puppets, she’d improved the spatial awareness program of the robotics – everything was that much better, because they’d done it once and she’d been able to improve all the areas with the tweaks necessary.

Now if only everything else could pull together in the way she wanted.

After the third day in Toulouse, she’d been out on the street in her Versace dress and the high heels that added an easy three inches to her height, and Toni turned away from the coffee shop – she loved cafés in France, they always had the _best_ coffee – to get a huge bright light flashing in her face, the shutters of cameras snapping. While she was certainly familiar with pictures being taken of her – even pictures being taken of her specifically when she didn’t want or didn’t expect – she certainly hadn’t expected the news camera shoved in her face.

She probably should have. If Pepper had been with her instead of this PA, she probably would have gotten at least a little forewarning. As it was, she was ticking through the sound bytes she could give about the circus and why she was touring the European Union, when the reporter asked, in rapid-fire French, “What is your position on the scandal tearing Stark Industries apart? Do you really have no care for your company, that you are in Europe doing this instead of taking care of house at home?”

For half a second, she froze – and she knew, she _knew_ , she’d be taken apart because of that moment of complete shock – and then she smiled charmingly. “Now, now, someone must not have a lot of information, sweetie. Don’t you know? I can’t do anything in the company until I turn 21. While I’d love otherwise, I just have to say, lawyers don’t like it when you ignore their express wishes. Have you ever tried? Nasty people they can be sometimes.”

“So you really are just going to shove blame onto everyone else? You won’t take any responsibility for this?”

Toni brought the cup up to her face to hide most of her reaction, as the reporter shoved pictures of a destroyed village in her face. That looked like the work of the Jericho – a missile she had designed, but she hadn’t thought had entered production. Either someone had sold her plans, or had gone ahead with production without informing her and then sold the finished product to someone. Either way, there was something fishy in her company, and now she had to wonder if Obie sent her away to hide just how bad the entire situation of the Stark Industries was from her. She _had_ been getting way more curious and involved in the business side of things—

“I will say that, _if_ that is anything Stark Industries related, my condolences. Stark Industries takes pride in being respectable, and this is the furthest from that. But you can’t expect some official statement from me, here, right now, not when I’m in the middle of promoting Stark Industries’ robotics and prosthetics division, and new direction into medical and energy technology. That’s a little over-the-top, even for the French, wouldn’t you say?” Smiling sweetly, she strode past the reporter and stalked down the street.

She had to somehow squeeze into the day time to look into what the hell was happening at Stark Industries, and she just didn’t know if that was realistic or not. Not with trying to keep an eye on Rumlow, trying to solve the problems of logistics with everyone and everything around her, _and_ trying to help Clint on the sly, even if Rumlow didn’t want her involved with the mission in any capacity.

Returning to the stadium, she was promptly embroiled in more logistics problems – the food had been found, but for some reason it had been slotted with the paper and cloth supplies, and so half of the food had spoiled and needed replacing, for one – and so she didn’t really have a chance to remember it until two in the morning, while she sat at her desk and felt her eyes physically throb from the strain of trying to juggle numbers and get everything set right.

She looked up and let out a shout, jerking back in her chair. “Jesus Christ, what the hell?”

Winter stood there like a particularly creepy grim reaper, or a ghost – his customary mask covering the lower half of his mouth and his tactical vest chewed up.

Chewed up.

“Fuck, Winter, why the hell don’t you ever knock? You like giving me a heart attack before I’m thirty?”

She saw the corners of his eyes crinkle, and he slowly walked over to the desk. As he did so, he noticed his metal arm was sparking a little.

“Hell, you literally got chewed up, didn’t you? What, did they have dogs? They might have had dogs. I can’t imagine what else would chew on your clothes like that. Fuck, half your pant leg is missing. Some skin, too. Glad to see you’re not bleeding too much, that would be a heck of a thing to try to explain to Somerset tomorrow morning.”

As she talked, she went into her desk and pulled out her tool kit – just the basics, just a few tools – and moved over to let him sit. She took his arm and started rotating it a little, keeping an eye on Winter. There were days when he didn’t want anyone touching it, no matter how badly it hurt, and other days where he didn’t mind. He wasn’t very verbal, though he knew sign language, and she would communicate to him sporadically throughout the time she knew him.

The good thing was that animal teeth wouldn’t do great damage, just crunch in some of the more delicate areas. As she worked on it, she watched his shoulders relax. Finally, as she was almost done, Winter made the sign for FUBAR.

“Your mission went that badly, huh?” Toni muttered, her mouth occupied by a screwdriver, fingers readjusting the wiring under the dented-in metal plate of the inner elbow.

Winter half made the signs for ‘tough security system.’

“You know, if Rumlow got over himself and actually used me the way _Obie_ said I should help, then I could definitely get past any type of mechanical or electrical system,” Toni pointed out. Helping Clint with little pieces of technology or better-designed arrows only went so far. If they didn’t know how to manipulate security systems and hack electrical locks and motion detectors and the like, there wasn’t much she could create that would turn off the alarms.

Winter eyed her speculatively and then let out a small sigh. ‘Thank you,’ he signed.

“More than welcome. Any time. Literally. So long as you knock first.”

His body shuddered a little – probably laughing silently – and he stood up, flexing his metal arm before patting her back. ‘Take rest,’ he signed.

She laughed. “When do I have time? Hell, with that reporter, with worrying about Clint and you and even Rumlow, that asshole, and with whoever fucked up the supplies here – when do I have time? But our first show isn’t until the afternoon tomorrow, so I’ll figure some time to snag a nap, I suppose.”

Winter left her office, and she watched him go.

She _definitely_ needed to figure out what the hell Rumlow and company were doing.

***

They blew through France and the Netherlands (Amsterdam was amazing, as always, but she barely got any time to see it, what with her on the phone half the time with Pepper, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on in Stark Industries) and were in Brussels before Rumlow finally slunk into her office. The man was no more than ten years older than her, and yet he loved to lord it over to her, loved to shove her face in the fact that her Aunt had designated him to be Toni’s supervisor and instructor. They had had a very antagonistic relationship for over five years now, and so she _may_ have taken a bit more pleasure in superseding his authority with those baby agents, and she _may_ be taking too much pleasure in the fact that he was here, now, trying to ask her for help after denying he needed her help for the past three cities – and getting nowhere.

“So let me get this straight,” she said with relish. “You finally admit you need some higher level of tech support than what you currently have, and finally realized I was actually here and present and in a way _ordered_ to help you – and you finally step into my office, coming to ask me for help.”

Rumlow glowered at her.

“Aren’t you a bundle of joy? Just like Winter, aren’t you?” she sighed, and leaned back in her chair, throwing a pen on the desk, watching it roll over the thick paperwork spread over the wooden surface. “So what do you want? Or are you here to tell me I’m stepping on your authority again?”

He crossed his arms, bristling with negativity. “Your Aunt would _murder_ me if I put you on our mission.”

With a sigh, she spread her hands expressively. “I don’t need to be in the mission. I’m not asking for that. Hell, I don’t _want_ that. I don’t want to be involved in what you are doing. I need some level of divorcement from what you do in any case, because what you are doing is technically _illegal_. I don’t need _another_ Stark Industries scandal popping up. And, frankly, I don’t play well with others, and you know that. I know that. We all know that.”

“So where are we going with this?” Rumlow ground out.

“So, you give me the blueprints of whatever building you’re trying to scope, you tell me what you’re going for, if there’s a way to plug my master key in, you plug it in and let me pull whatever files you need, or hack whatever lock you need hacked. If you want anything else, you have to be specific about it, because right now I’m spitting in the dark, trying to figure out what you want—”

He nodded curtly, and his rumble interrupted her. “That’s enough. That’s good. Create that master key, I’ll send Clint over with the blueprints. You have two days to figure it out.”

With that, he turned on his heel and exited her office.

Great. Another task she had to jump on right now.

The Cirque du Soleil act joined them, and would be with them into Germany as well. She paused her work on the do-all master key in order to run through the rehearsal and make the new act comfortable in their quarters. Then she got to field two calls, one from Obie and one from Pepper, both yelling at her for speaking on camera with a reporter without getting a prepared speech from them.

It was honestly a relief to step out onto that stage, wearing the mechanical boots and gloves she had designed, her cane in her hand, top hat fixed jauntily over her hair. She led with her standard opener, but immediately kicked off the presentation by firing up the boots, suspending herself in the air as her robotics trundled out, bowing for the crowd, from mechanical dogs to gliding birds that were painted in jewel tones. They went up to the edges of the crowd, the birds flew overhead, and she floated in the middle, reveling in the high that flight gave her, her cane tucked under her stabilizing arm as her other arm spread imperiously, granting her robotics freedom to interact.

This was what she loved – the showboat aspect, the way the crowd roared, the wonder and amazement on all the faces before her. She flew above the crowds and for the space of the show – the huge, larger than life puppets that took the stage next, telling a traditional folktale from this country (each show tailored to each country they toured in), the acrobatics tumbling in around, the two guest acts followed by the showstopper, the Cirque du Soleil, and then the summation of the show, the brilliant flash and bang of fireworks and pinwheels. Of everything on this hellish tour, of her using her JARVIS back home to ping her what he finds as he burrowed into what this mission was supposed to be, what Obie’s motivations were for sending her on this – of everything that distracted her and made her ready to pull her hair out, _this_ was worth it, and she stared down at the audience and just… _breathed_.

***

“What a _naughty_ boy, Brock the brick,” Toni murmured, looking over the information that was filtering back to her personal tablet from the master key she had given them. See, the interesting thing here was that the key she gave would of course do what she said it would – it would unlock computer systems, let them find whatever they were looking for – but it also transmitted that data to her personal servers.

“JARVIS, buddy, you around?”

“As much as I can be, ma’am,” came the robotic voice through her tablet.

“Store all of this. I want a file composed, because this is something that needs to be reported and I don’t quite know what… else… to do,” she murmured, tapping her fingers against her desk. “Is Aunt Peggy contactable at the moment?”

It took him a while – he wasn’t as integrated in SHIELD servers as she would have liked, and his servers were definitely limited as he learned and grew. But after a few moments, he replied, “She is incommunicado, it appears. Do you wish me to attempt contact?”

“No, J, we’ll figure it out, I’m sure,” she sighed, shaking her head and dropping her tablet on the desk. Threading her fingers behind her head, she leaned back in her chair and tried to figure out what she wanted to do next.

The show was finished here in Belgium, and they were heading to Germany tomorrow. She would wait until she had a lot more data – enough to bury them in, and enough to know what their long-term goal was – before figuring out what to do with it.

“Well, J, we still gotta show to put on,” she sighed. “We’ll figure it out as we go along.”

***

Germany went off without a hitch – well, Winter needed more work on his arm, but everything else went well. She was having stellar reviews, making a ton of money, her show selling out in record times, and overall the Stark Circus was a huge success.

(She was kinda getting the vibe that Obie wasn’t thrilled for her, but then again, she was pretty sure he had tried to get her to do this so that she’d sully the Stark name, make it easier to dismiss her, and instead she’d taken one of the hardest things she could have possibly done and pulled it off in a stellar fashion.)

After Germany was Rome, and Rome was stunning. Well, not literally – it was rainy almost the entire five days they were in Rome – but those shows were the best they had so far.

But what really struck her in Rome was a sudden influx of new faces.

Now, she really had a big enough staff that there was no way for her to know _everyone_ who worked on the circus, but when her ‘strong man’ and two of the acrobats decided to leave for personal reasons, the three who came in to take the place of the three were definitely noteworthy.

Well, at least one of them was.

“What’s your name?” she asked, walking up to the big blonde. “You’re not as broad as the last guy, but mmm, those pecs. What happened to ol’ Christian, anyway?”

“Ah, he had a family emergency,” he said, ducking his head. Red dusted his cheeks, and she had a few moments to revel in his very, _very_ fair skin that showed that adorable blush before she realized SHIELD was meddling in her circus again.

Not that she could confront them about it, not when most of the staff – well, _all_ of the staff minus the baby agents that ran around like her underlings – had no clue that this was a front for SHIELD.

So she just gave him a very _thorough_ once-over, and narrowed her eyes at the people taking over Laila and Leena’s places – a fairly tall young black man, swarthy and serious-looking, and a slim red-head who looked _waay_ too innocent for Toni’s liking – before continuing with the rehearsal.

Back in her office, she summoned Somerset and immediately pulled the ‘files’ on her new staff members. A Roger Stevens, a Natalie Rushman, and a Samson Wilcox. All had stellar reputations, no hint of any criminal records, and were oh-so-easily accessible when Christian, Laila, and Leena all suddenly remembered they had very important family emergencies to tend to.

She called for Clint.

Clint, being Clint, never came when called – like a cat, honestly, or a particularly dense dog – and so she ended up wading through more paperwork to settle the circus here in Rome until about midnight before Clint ambled into her office.

“I don’t appreciate it, you know,” she said shortly.

He paused, and glanced around. “Appreciate… what?”

“SHIELD deciding to just _take_ some of my acts and throw in substitutes, what else would I be talking about, Clint?” Toni growled. “Where the hell were you, anyway?”

“Hey, a guy’s first time in Rome, he’s entitled to wander around a bit, see the sights,” Clint said defensively. “Are you pissy because I didn’t come when called?”

She glared at him, partly because she was annoyed and partly because she couldn’t believe he was wrapped up in what Rumlow was doing without any issue at all. “I’m pissy because SHIELD pulled three of my steady acts – acts that are printed on the billfolds and can’t be erased in this city – and shoved three of their people in my circus on their say-so. Roger? Natalie? Samson? Any of these name ringing a bell?”

“They’re really not, Toni. I didn’t know about any—”

He froze, eyes narrowing, and then his face suddenly turned all innocent. “I don’t know about any—”

“Ah, ah, ah – now you’re lying, and even so, it doesn’t matter if you weren’t before, because the problem is that I am supposed to be the one in charge of this and SHIELD seems really determined to make my job harder in new and increasingly petty ways,” Toni snapped. “So if you don’t mind, will I have to worry about these performers suddenly disappearing while you’re on missions? Because you guys normally leave while we’re on display, and while that makes it easier not to suspect because people assume you’re _here_ , doing actual work, it means that if they decide to join you I will have to very quickly look for someone to replace them and relegate them to baby agent work.”

“You don’t even know they’re SHIELD,” he protested.

She raised one eyebrow at him. “Please, I’m not an idiot. Three convenient family emergencies, three replacements already waiting in the shadows? Aunt Peggy may have tried to keep me away from all field work but even I know that’s suspicious as all hell.”

“I’ll talk to them, but I’m sure they won’t be causing you any trouble,” Clint promised.

***

“Won’t cause you any trouble, Toni,” Toni griped, arms folded across her chest, sitting on the chair, staring at the mirror. “Won’t do anything to make things worse. We’re only here to help, ma’am,” she mimicked. “Well, I’m damn troubled right now.”

The door opened, and one of Greece’s police force walked into the room. Greek, unfortunately, was _not_ one of the languages she spoke, and so they had taken time to locate someone who could speak English.

(She wasn’t going to helpfully tell them she could speak fluid Spanish and French – why make it easier? She was already sitting here on trumped up charges, might as well make them work at it and make them feel like they earned their paycheck.)

“Missus Stark,” the man began.

“Just miss, officer. While I’m here in this room, care to tell me why I’m here? I have a very important show to get to this afternoon.”

The man harrumped, looking at her over the edge of the file in his hands. “You would do well not to make light of the trouble you are in. Everywhere you go, trouble pops up for very important people. Important people who report industrial espionage. You are spying, Missus Stark, and stealing.”

“Now, now, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she said, smiling sweetly. “First, I said my name is just miss. I’d thank you to keep that in mind. Second, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t stolen, or spied, on anyone.”

(Technically, it was JARVIS doing the spying, so she wasn’t wrong about that.)

“Not only that, but I am a very busy person, and I think you’re aware that important people who call me names tend to not be very important later in life.

She leaned back in the chair and folded her arms.

He took a piece of paper out form his files. “First, let us talk about London.”

“Oh, god,” Toni muttered.

By some miracle of fate – and money – she was out of the interrogation room with barely a half hour to spare for getting her costume on and she just had to hope that these new acts had trained enough to pull off the show without any hitches.

After the first show, still frazzled from the impromptu interrogation and reeling from the adrenaline high, she coasted over to where Roger, Samson, and Natalie were all sitting together and leaned on the doorframe.

“Sweet moves out there, Roger,” she purred. “You certainly can pack a punch, I see. Makes sense – not everyone needs muscles to show they’re strong. But if you ever want to see how long you can hold me up against a wall…” she trailed off, winking at him, and then strode away.

She heard the good-natured teasing from Samson as she left, and if it was anyone else, she wouldn’t have been so blatant, so rude in her obvious like, but they were SHIELD agents. They could handle it – or, they could crash and fail, and she could send them back and get her original little acrobats and strong man.

***

Their last stop was Minsk, an odd choice from the outside, though Toni knew they had all traveled to cities that either had a weapons manufacturer in the actual city limits or was close enough nearby to get there by car and back during the length of a single show. It was a picturesque city, and Toni privately lamented that she’d been cooped up being the most responsible of her life she ever had been during this tour. Beyond her mandatory outings to upper crust parties and events to drum up recognition, as well as establish herself as a name and force to be reckoned with (and with Ty always, _always_ there – he drove her absolutely nuts), and her time at the circus, she barely had enough time in the day to snag a cup of coffee from a local coffee place. She still tried, though – which was how they got her.

She didn’t know _who_ they were – they could have just been random people kidnapping her, or people who knew who she worked for and were hoping for a ransom, or, hell, even the police force taking another interest in her. All she knew was that she was dumped in a small room, tied up like a worm, and a gag in her mouth.

Amazingly, her first thought when she woke up from whatever they had drugged her with was that she wouldn’t be there for the afternoon rehearsal, which would tip a lot of people off to something being wrong, as she hadn’t once missed a rehearsal (even when sick and nearly coughing a lung up back in Germany). But her second thought was how the circus would continue with her gone. Obviously, it would survive – that much was clear. The acts certainly were like a well-oiled machine by now – having a simplicity to them that appealed to the wider audience.

So yeah, well-and-truly tied up, thrown like a sack of potatoes down in the middle of filth by black-masked freaks, and then the door closed behind them in a loud bang.

She wasn’t a genius for nothing, though, and so she immediately began to wiggle forward, hoping to loosen the ropes enough to start undoing her bonds.

It didn’t work, but it revealed that all of the boxes had been sent to a very specific address – probably the address of where she now sat.

Groaning under her breath, she inchworm-inched her way across the room, trying to get a feel for what she had available to her. She couldn’t really figure out why anyone would kidnap her now… she hadn’t had to deal with a kidnapping in so long…

There was the sound of footsteps in the hall, and she froze and went limp, pretending to still be asleep. When the door opened, someone dragged something inside and then went silent and still.

She didn’t want to engage, not unless she had the upper hand, which she did not have right then, so she lay limp on the floor until she heard a soft rustling noise.

Cracking open her eye, she saw one of her kidnappers sitting on a chair, reading a newspaper.

Great.

She must have dozed off at some given point, because she was utterly taken by surprise when shouting started, and gunfire rattled. She popped open her eyes in time to see the man in her room jump to his feet – she memorized his face as best she could in the short amount of time she saw it – and dash out.

Left alone to her own devices, she immediately wiggled towards the chair. The bar between the two back legs was rectangular, which meant an edge. Leaning her back up against it, awkwardly, she began to rub the rope around her wrists against the bar, trying to wear the rope down so she could get her hands free. Spitting out the die, she growled under her breath as she frantically tried to free herself.

“Just a circus, Toni, it’ll be easy, look, Rumlow will be there and Winter and Clint, you like Clint, don’t you? Not any fucking more I don’t, but no, it’s all good, we’re all okay—”

She had long enough to wear the ropes down that she could feel the give in them when the door suddenly burst open and big blonde dude – Roger, only this was a Roger in a _very_ tight and form-fitting uniform that did nothing to hide his ass at all, and god be praised at that – glanced around before his eyes riveted on her.

“Before you say anything, or swoop in like some knight rescuing my damsel-in-distress-ass,” she said quickly, “I totally would have been able to free myself and be ready to knock you a good one if you were like, five minutes later.”

That startled a laugh from him, transforming his super-serious face into something a lot more youthful and engaging. “Of course, Miss Stark. Why don’t I help you up though?”

“Yeah, if you’re already here, why not,” she muttered, sighing under her breath as he lifted her easily and almost literally _tore_ through the ropes – pulling them at her skin a little, but really, she was glad to be out of them.

For all of like three seconds, before her legs buckled underneath her and she nearly face-planted into the ground, had Roger not caught her.

“Damn, must be more woozy than I thought,” she muttered. “What did they put in that cocktail, anyway?”

“Something very strong, Miss Stark,” Roger offered helpfully, and then he paused awkwardly.

She eyed him and then realized his issue. With a sigh, she threw her hands dramatically out and up. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, if I can’t walk out of here you have my permission to carry me. Hell if I know how long my legs have been tied up, for them to go all wobbly like that.”

“Were you out the whole time?” he asked gravely, lifting her up into a princess carry.

If she was going to be subjected to it, she was going to own that motherfucker. Draping an arm around his shoulder and neck, she waved airily. “Up until they dumped me here in this room. That’s what woke me up – the dumping. Literal dumping. Anyway. Why, was this warehouse pretty far away from Minsk? I think you guys got here pretty fast – I woke up and boom. Here you guys are.”

As he stepped through the door, he replied, a little gently, “Miss Stark, we’ve been searching for you for two days.”

She jerked in his hands, making him overbalance and rock to compensate for her flailing, and her head ended up colliding with a doorframe. “Ow, what the fuck? Two days?”

“We’ve been very worried. We thought perhaps you were taken by the police force, since they were investigating the industrial espionage members of your staff were carrying out—”

“Hey, I was compiling data to send to Aunt – ah, to send to Peggy Carter, a level nine agent of SHIELD – because I didn’t know who to trust or who to send it to. I was led to assist their missions under false pretenses. Though why the hell Clint went through with it…”

She could feel a very noticeable relaxing of his muscles, and he grinned down at her. Damn, if she could bottle up that smile and sell it, she’d be – well, a bigger billionaire than she was now. “That’s good to know, Miss, since my team was brought in to bring down the rogue SHIELD team that was operating with you.”

“Oh, not the baby ducklings! They’ve been working mainly for me the whole time, just running gear and shit for Rumlow and his crew. You can’t punish them, I forbid it.”

He was running with her, and she could still hear gunfire – getting closer. Skidding around a corner, they came face to face with very unfamiliar faces, and Roger made a quick about-face and ran back the way they came.

“I’m sorry, the gunfire is getting _louder_ , and this is not a time to see if adrenaline can make my legs magically walk or run, so why the hell are we going back towards the gunfire?” she demanded. “What kind of rescuer are you?”

“Well,” he said, voice amused and almost too innocently deadpan, “for one, I’m the guy who can do this.”

He put on a burst of speed, barreling through, and she had a moment to realize he was going to jump out the _fucking window_ —

With a screech worthy of any banshee, she yanked her head close to his chest, holding him for dear life, as he twisted so it was his back (and her arms around his neck, which, motherfucking _ouch_ ) going through the window, and he somehow managed to twist like a freaking cat and land almost perfectly on his feet.

She couldn’t stop laughing, exhilaration mixed with _sheer fucking terror_ , as he placed her gently on her feet. Much less gracefully and gently, she sank to the ground, which was when Clint came running up to her.

“Dammit, Toni, I was certain you were dead, I thought Rumlow had gotten wise to your datamining and had offed you, fuck,” he breathed, hugging her tight.

She glanced up at her rescuer and squinted at his outfit. “What are you, some replica of Captain America or some shit? What are you doing wearing that outfit in fucking Belarus?”

“Actually, we’re in Lithuania right now,” Roger said. “And my friends call me Steve.”

“Steve? Your last name… wait a goddamned minute, are you actually Steve Rogers? The fucking Steve Rogers? Aren’t you supposed to be like a hundred fucking years old?”

“Your curses are a lot more frequent and unrefined,” Clint noticed, and she barely noticed his hands carefully checking for any wounds. “Normally you’re far more eloquent than this.”

She turned around with such a look of disbelief that he winced a little.

“I’m sorry,” she said sweetly. “Should I enunciate more after being kidnapped for two days, led to believe one of the best agents I know was involved in corporate espionage, being the head of this literal circus for more than two months while putting up with Ty’s creepy stalking me from city to city, finding out that my mentor had most likely sent me on this snipe hunt to either smear my name in scandal or blow my reputation out of the water? Would that be fucking _eloquent_ enough for you?”

He opened his mouth and closed it.

She sniffed imperiously and held her hand out to Roger – Steve. To Steve. Who was apparently Captain freaking America. “Take me to a bed, Steve. With you in it, preferably, or at least with the possibility of you in it in the near future.”

He still blushed adorably.


End file.
